Building A Relationship With Your Guitar

By Chris Standring ( www.chrisstandring.com )

I am convinced one can become a great player with a limited knowledge of harmony, theory and technique. Now, before you jump down my throat and say "Why on earth would you recommend that?!" Well - I'm not recommending that you stop learning these invaluable aspects of music. I am saying that there is a great deal one can do with just a little. Of course, the more you know about music theory, the easier it will be to continue to learn and absorb information. The more you know about harmony, the easier it will be to understand new music and give you access to harmonic reinvention. The more you know about technique, the easier it will be to execute things you hear in your head. There is never a reason to stop learning these things. But there is so much that can be said with just a little. I will try to explain...

Once you have a basic knowledge of guitar playing it is important to live with your guitar, you know, develop a relationship with it. What I mean by this is that all the things you practice have a need to be absorbed into your playing. You need to have patience and know that things aren't necessarily going to happen overnight. Some things kick in after a while and when you least expect them to.

I can remember a time at my classical music college in London. I was studying solo classical guitar and in my own spare time having a fascination with jazz. But I had some problems with right hand technique, and frankly I had a ton of jazz vocabulary to learn, not to mention sight-reading and everything else that was on my musical plate at the time. So I studied and studied and my friends at college rarely saw me as I stayed at home all week shedding. I was pretty obsessed. Eight hour days of focused practice ensued and I watched the results, which of course fueled me to practice even more.

But then I left music college and I was presented with the daunting task of making a living in my chosen profession, and so my practice hours gradually lessened. I even remember stopping scheduled practice completely for several months and I just played. And you know what?... this is when things really kicked in. My playing took on a huge leap. Why? because I stopped forcing things and let things naturally absorb.....or not. Some things didn't get into my playing that I practiced (Some quite difficult Wynton Kelly licks I seem to remember!) but a great deal of what I practiced did get absorbed. The point is I let things breathe a while and things took on a natural course of their own. It was an incredible epiphany for me. That whole process of practicing and then just living. It seemed right.

And then I realized something equally interesting, to me at least. That whatever I played on the guitar had to really come from my fingers and not the guitar. Every note on the guitar, across the entire fretboard, had a compl...

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